CS or Comp. Bio?

[chami-nerd]

Hi,

I'm currently deciding between two programs, and they are both very different.

 

In terms of living situation, both are in very nice cities.

 

For the Comp. Bio program, the funding is much better, and I have previous experience with an advisor there (who I work well with). I'd probably be working on Bioimage informatics with an expert in machine learning.

 

For the CS program, there is more flexibility in the curriculum, and less emphasis on biology obviously (which I currently haven't taken since high school). I'd probably focus on computer vision and machine learning - one potential advisor is "hard" CV, the other is medical image analysis and ML.

 

One thing that I currently don't have an understanding of is my job prospects post graduation. Right now, I'm not sure if I want academia or industry (leaning towards industry). What kind of job opportunities are available to me with a CS degree vs. a Computational Biology degree?

 

It switches week to week but my current leaning is towards Comp. Bio. My main worry is that it will pigeon-hole me into certain kinds of jobs (is that even bad?). Any thoughts?

[ssk2]

The world is your oyster with computer science degree :-). Obviously depends on what your undergraduate degree was but computer scientists are useful in almost any field. 

 

Computation biology does seem quite specific - what overlap does it have with computer science? If there are a reasonable number of decent CS courses then I don't see it being a problem - but it probably won't be as useful overall as doing a pure CS degree and might put you at a disadvantage relative to other applicants.

[chami-nerd]

Thanks for your reply!

 

From wikipedia: Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.

 

My understanding is that computer science is one of the central fields used in computational biology. Specifically I will be taking courses in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, maybe Computational Geometry, etc. in the comp. bio program.

[compiler_guy]

I don't think a CS VS a Comp Bio degree differs that much. However a Comp Bio degree will open doors in medical institutions and biomedical firms. If you are planning to do applied Bio ML, then those skills are probably transferable to "pure" CS, like internet and data ML, so you don't need to worry.

 

However with a PhD you will probably be overqualified for many "regular" jobs, and you will be specialized for a job in your chosen field. Also, you could realign your interests with a Post-doc after you finish your degree.

[chami-nerd]

True, I do think that the ML skills will be transferrable but I was wondering if employers would see it that way. I think the post-doc comment is a very good point as well; it could be a very powerful tool to position your knowledge in a certain direction.

 

Is the "overqualified" thing really true? I had heard it before, but I was hoping it wasn't.

 

Anyway, thanks for the input!

[pikaStardust]

As far as I observed, there will be a really high demand for computational biologists in the near future. 
Computational analysis of biological data is becoming more and more important with all these huge and collaborative sequencing projects. Also there is huge interest in usage of genomic data for drug discovery and clinical treatments. Bioimage informatics is also popular for identifying cancerous tissues or grading the stage of cancer. These are just a slice of it, there are lots of other subfields of computational biology.

However, the current problem in the field is that the number of people understanding both biological and computational world is limited, compared to the actual demand. My undergrad is from molecular biology and genetics department and now I am an MS in computer engineering. My molecular biologist friends say that they don't get "computational biology stuff" because it is too computational and my computer scientist friends say that it is too biological and computational biology is a nightmare for both of them. However it is obivous that we need people who does not shy away from computational biology. So you can place yourself in a distinguished place from others if you can succeed in their intersection. Interdisciplinary fields are becoming more important and improving yourself in more than one field will definitely have a positive effect in your career. 

However, this is related more to the case where you continue with academia. I'm not really sure how it will affect your chances in industry. 

(I am going for a computational biology PhD so I might be biased, I don't know. If you have further questions about comp bio, you can always ask.)

 

Edit: Oh, I just realised that you are accepted by Joint CMU-Pitt program. If the professor you will be working with is from CMU CS department, then this will be an excellent opportunity for you. Their CS department is one of the best in the world.

Edited March 31, 2013 by pikaStardust